Hells Angels MC criminal allegations and incidents in New York
[20] A police raid on the East Village headquarters of the New York City Hells Angels chapter on March 18, 1972 resulted in five arrests and the seizure of guns, knives and explosive devices.
[23] Local residents at the time also reported that the Hells Angels had been responsible for numerous incidents of violence, threats and harassment against various, predominantly African American, motorists and passersby in the area during the previous two years.
[25] Released on a $50,000 bail, Girolamo died on September 12, 1979 of complications from a ruptured spleen, believed to have been sustained in a fight with Oakland, California chapter member Michael "Irish" O'Farrell.
[26] An Italian tourist, Diego Servetti, suffered a broken arm in an attack allegedly carried out by a biker wielding an ax handle after he sat on a motorcycle outside the clubhouse on April 30, 2006.
The police were refused access to the Hells Angels clubhouse and responded by closing off the area, setting up sniper positions, and sending in an armored personnel carrier.
Five security cameras cover the entrance to the New York chapter's East 3rd Street club house, but the NY HAMC maintains nobody knows how Shalaby was beaten nearly to death at their front door.
[34] The decades-long conflict between the Hells Angels and the Outlaws reportedly originated from a personal feud between two members of the Aliens biker gang in 1969, when the wife of Sandy Alexander was allegedly raped by fellow club member Peter "Greased Lightning" Rogers while Alexander was in California meeting with Hells Angels leader Sonny Barger.
[40] "Whiskey" George E. Hartman, Jr. and Edwin Thomas "Riverboat" Riley were identified by rival bikers seeking revenge for the attack on Rogers while on a visit to the Outlaws' territory in Florida to supervise the covering up of Hells Angels tattoos belonging to Albert E. "Oskie" Simmons, who had relocated to Orlando, Florida to operate a motorcycle shop after leaving the club in 1973.
They were then each bound with rope before being fatally shot in the head with a 12-gauge shotgun after being forced into a van at gunpoint and taken to a quarry near Andytown, Florida by four Outlaws members.
[44] The bodies of the Massachusetts trio were then weighed down with concrete cinder blocks and submerged in a flooded, twenty-feet deep rock pit, but were discovered on May 1, 1974 after one corpse became dislodged and was seen by a passing motorist.
[47] The Hells Angels determined that the Outlaws were responsible for the massacre after an internal investigation, and subsequently declared war on their rivals at a national meeting in Cleveland, which was attended by representatives of every club chapter.
As a result, the Outlaws fortified their clubhouses with cinderblock walls and gunports on the orders of Chicago-based national president Harold "Stairway Harry" Henderson.
[59] College student Bruce Meyer was shot five times in the head at point-blank range with a .22 caliber handgun fitted with a silencer in the parking lot of his apartment building in Brewster on December 14, 1975.
[62] He was one of seven people arrested during a series of drug raids carried out in the Triple Cities by a task force of New York and Pennsylvania police agencies on February 27, 1980, which also led to the seizure of three pounds of cocaine valued between $138,000 and $200,000.
James Henry McAuley, Jr., the vice-president of the Rochester chapter and the leader of the drug ring, was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison in July 2016.
[20][67] The Nomads chapter established a semi-autonomous methamphetamine distribution business,[67] and allegedly controlled drug labs in Westchester and Putnam counties.
The Hells Angels' base of operations in Westchester County was at Big Joe's Tattoo Parlor in Mount Vernon, owned by Joel Kaplan.
[71][16] Operation Roughrider culminated with the arrests of 133 Hells Angels members and associates on racketeering and drug trafficking charges after over a thousand law enforcement personnel carried out approximately fifty coordinated raids in eleven U.S. states on May 2, 1985.
$2.6 million in cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine, hashish, PCP and LSD, as well as weapons including Uzi submachine guns and rocket launchers were seized.
[74][75][76] Arrest warrants were also issued for two Hells Angels, Herbert "One-Eyed Bert" Kittel and New York Nomads chapter president Chuck Zito, who were working as bodyguards for Bon Jovi on tour in Japan at the time.
Kittel and Zito surrendered to the United States Embassy in Tokyo on July 22, 1985 after they were the subject of a nationwide dragnet by Japanese police at the request of the FBI.
[26] On March 27, 1986, Mid-State members Kim D. "Mr. Fun" DiLuzio and Ronald G. "Big Cheese" Cheeseman were sentenced to fifteen and 26 years' imprisonment, respectively, after pleading guilty to federal racketeering and narcotics conspiracy charges.
Three associates – Janet "Puffy" Beam Cheeseman, James Lee "The Mayor" Farrigan and Richard D. "Piggy" Cirzeveto – were also given sentences of two, fifteen and eighteen years for drug trafficking and extortion.
[84] Cheeseman, president of the Binghamton and Mid-State chapters, was sentenced on April 1, 1986 to an additional six-to-eighteen-year sentence, to run concurrently, after pleading guilty to first-degree sodomy, a charge stemming from a video cassette showing him engaged in sexual acts with a seven-year-old boy and an eleven-year-old girl found when federal, state and local authorities searched his residence.
[85] The same day, seven other Hells Angels members and associates – Orville Deitz, Philip Kramer, Raymond "Butch" Lindsay, John "The Baptist" LoFranco, Patti Milhomme Root, Maureen "Mo" Pompey and Martin "Tiny" Pulver – were sentenced to prison terms of between six months and twenty-three years in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York in Albany after pleading guilty to various federal charges.
On February 4, 1994, after an approximately five-week trial, a jury returned a verdict in favor of the claimants, who they determined had proven that the premises was not used, or intended to be used, to commit, or to facilitate the commission of, a felony drug violation between October 12, 1984 and May 2, 1985.
